The Book of Ebenezer le Page (65 page)

The Thursday morning I thought well, if he don't come today, I don't expect he will come this week; and perhaps won't come at all. I couldn't blame him really, for why should he want to come and see an old man? but I knew if he didn't come I would be bitterly disappointed. In the afternoon when I had washed up after dinner, I went down on the beach, so as not to think about him. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and the sea was far out and very blue, and there was not a ripple. I sat on the flat rock dreaming of the days gone by; when I used to sit there with Tabitha, or Raymond. I can't sit down for five minutes anywhere nowadays, without I float back and dream of the days gone by; yet I was listening for the sound of his motor-bike and longing to hear it, much as I hate the things. I heard somebody coming down over the stones, and wondered who it was; but I didn't bother to look round. The next thing I knew was he had slid down the rock and was sitting quietly beside me. He wears soft shoes and moves like a cat, so I hadn't heard him once he got off the shingle on to the sand. ‘Here I am!' he said. ‘Aw, it's you,' I said. ‘I didn't hear the bike.' ‘I walked over,' he said. ‘Well, you've chosen a fine day,' I said.

‘I suppose you know what I have come for,' he said. ‘I haven't the least idea,' I said. ‘I owe you something,' he said. ‘I don't like being in debt.' ‘Well, that is a good way to be,' I said, ‘but you don't owe me nothing I know of.' He pulled out a handful of money from his hip pocket. ‘I want to pay you for those panes of glass I broke,' he said. That really did take me by surprise. ‘There is no need for you to do that,' I said. ‘It wasn't a few panes of glass broke hurt me. It was that somebody I didn't even know, and had never done any harm to, hated me enough to come and damage my property.' ‘I didn't hate you,' he said, ‘I wasn't thinking of you, or your property: you were just another old square.' ‘Now what exactly do you mean by that?' I said. ‘Don't you know?' he said. ‘No,' I said. ‘It is hard to explain,' he said. ‘The square is why we others are crooked. Anyway, you win. How much is it?' ‘For Christ's sake, put that money away!' I said. ‘If you want to pay your debt, give up smashing things. Violence never did nobody no good.' He didn't like that very much. His eyes went cold and hard, the way I had seen them at the Police Station; but he was looking at me very straight. ‘Have you never been violent in your life, Mr Le Page?' he said. It was me had to look away. ‘I am not saying do as I have done,' I said. ‘I am not an example for any man to follow.' He stretched himself out on the rock and laughed up at me. ‘I like you,' he said.

I like him too; but he isn't going to be all that easy to keep the peace with. He is like some young wild animal, who expect everybody older to trap him; and he is all the time watching out in case. I have to be careful what I say, or he shuts up like a clam. For the time being, he was quite at ease lying beside me in the sun, chatting merrily about his affairs. He had started that week on the line at Bulwer Avenue. Hours and hours doing exactly the same thing; and every movement watched. He hated it. He had done all sorts of jobs, on and off. He had worked on Herm with some other lads for Major Wood one summer, and he had tried Jersey, where he had worked in a hotel; yet he had been to the Grammar School and had a good education. I didn't understand it. I had thought he might be working for the States, since he knew what I had been up to; and I asked him how he knew. He wasn't going to tell me at first; but then he said, ‘She won't mind: she likes you. It was Adèle told me.' ‘Adèle? Adèle who?' I said. ‘Adèle de la Rue,' he said, ‘the girl in the desk.' ‘You know her, then?' I said. ‘I know her very well,' he said. ‘She is a darn nice girl,' I said. ‘I know she is a nice girl,' he said. ‘Mind you I'm not in love with her.' ‘Why ever not?' I said, ‘I would be, if I was your age.' ‘I don't fall in love,' he said; and stuck his chin out, as if it was the biggest insult in the world for me to think he might. Is it a sort of monster he is?

I wanted to know if Adèle got herself into trouble with the boss because of me. He said she had known what I was doing, but it wasn't her responsibility; and she let it pass. All the same, it was her got the blame; and she flared up and left. She needn't have done so, but was glad of the excuse. She was fed up with it there. I said I had wondered if the young chap I had seen in the office with her and who took her place was her fiancé. ‘What, that drip!' he said. ‘She won't marry anybody, let me tell you, unless I give her the O.K. She looks on me as a father.' I began to wonder if young Neville was as clever as he thought. Her real father was dead, he said; and her mother was married again and gone to Canada. Adèle was living with an aunt who kept a shop at St Andrews; and now she had gone back to serve in the shop. ‘I do hope she is going to be all right,' I said. ‘It don't sound much of a job.' He said, ‘Adèle knows her way around, don't you worry. She will only stay there as long as it suits her.'

I asked him if he could spare the time to come indoors and have a cup of tea. ‘As long as you like,' he said. ‘Good!' I said. I hadn't found out half I wanted to know about him yet. When I struggled to get to my feet, he jumped up and held out a hand to help me. I said I could manage; but he have nice ways. He hadn't said nothing about his painting, so while we was walking up the beach, I said, ‘I saw the picture you painted in the paper; unless there is another Neville Falla.' ‘There are a number of other Neville Fallas,' he said, ‘but I am the culprit.' ‘What is it supposed to be?' I said. ‘What it says,' he said. ‘I am glad you got the first prize,' I said, ‘but I wish I knew why.' ‘Of course it has to be looked at in the right way,' he said. ‘In any case, it is only a blur in black and white. From how it was printed in the
Press
, nobody could possibly make any sense of it.' Suddenly he caught hold of my arm and stopped, looking up at Les Moulins. ‘Now that would make a good picture!' he said. It was a funny view from down there; but with the flowers in front and the path and the edge of the rocks, and the tree and the wind-mill behind, I could see it might look all right. That is, if I would know what it was, when he had done with it. What struck me as funny was here was me going to leave him that house to live in; and all he was thinking about was he wanted to paint a picture of it!

The moment he got in the kitchen, the first thing he noticed was my Uncle Nat's ship on the wall. ‘God, did you do that?' he said. I said no: it was done by my uncle years ago. ‘Are there any more of his about?' he said. ‘I don't expect so,' I said. ‘They went to his sisters when he died; and that was the only one my mother had. She didn't want it, and only let me bring it because she didn't want to make bad feeling in the family. The others will long ago have been thrown away as junk.' I knew Hetty hung one in a back bedroom for years where nobody would see it. ‘They are only done with wool,' I said. ‘It doesn't matter what a picture is made of,' he said. Since he was so interested, I told him how my uncle was making that particular picture while his mother was dying in the next room. ‘He didn't know it,' I said. ‘He was soft in the head.' ‘I bet he did know it,' said Neville. ‘It's marvellous!' I said, ‘Well, that is one thing you and me agree about, because I have always liked that picture; and have never got tired of seeing it on my wall.'

I gave him a good tea. I'd got something special ready every day in case he came: which I'd had to eat up myself. That day I had a fresh chancre I had cooked in the copper the day before. While I was laying the table, he sprawled full length on the green-bed I had kept in the kitchen since Tabitha died, so as I would myself be able to sleep by the fire. ‘Can I do anything to help?' he said. ‘No, you're all right where you are,' I said. I liked to see him there. ‘Shall I go to Canada, or to Australia, or New Zealand?' he said. ‘I would have more room, eh? What do you think?' I felt myself go cold. I didn't want a day ever to come when he wouldn't be coming in and out of the house, as if it was his home; and sprawling on the green-bed and me getting him ready a meal: but he was like a firework going off in all directions at once. I got the feeling he was half asking me to make up his mind for him; but I dare not, or ten to one he would go and do exactly the opposite. ‘It is for you to decide where you go to,' I said. ‘I can't compare Guernsey to other places, because I have never been to any other places; except for one day to Jersey to see the Muratti.' ‘Do you really mean to say you have lived every day of your life in this house?' he said. ‘Slept here every night, eaten every meal in this room?' ‘Well, I have eaten a few meals elsewhere,' I said, ‘and slept at the Huts when I was in the Militia, and usually Saturday nights and always New Year's Eve at Les Grands Gigands when my friend, Jim Mahy, was living there.' ‘I never have a friend,' he said; and out came the chin. ‘Come on, eat up now!' I said. I wasn't having no more of that nonsense.

The table was laid rough. I poured out the tea in the blue and white mugs without saucers I got from Woolworth's, and the vinegar bottle was on the table: I couldn't be bothered to use the proper cruet. There was a hammer to crack the claws with, and a nut-cracker I use for nuts at Christmas for the legs; and I cut him good thick slices of bread and butter. He tucked in as if he hadn't had a meal for a week. I wondered if the boy was having enough to eat. Suddenly he said, arising out of nothing, ‘I think I would do best to make a go of it here: I don't think I could paint anywhere else.' I didn't let my joy show. ‘I hear the visitors raving about the scenery,' I said, ‘but I don't notice it myself. I like the sea.' ‘They don't see the scenery, or the sea, or anything!' he said. ‘They only look at it. It is in me from the start. Guernsey it shall be!' I thought it safe to say then, ‘Well, I, for one, am very glad to hear it.' ‘Unless they push me off,' he said, ‘I am not very popular in some quarters.' I thought it best to say nothing. He wasn't to know I knew Constable Le Page.

He wanted to help me clear away; but I said we could leave the things for now and go for a stroll. It was much too fine to stop indoors. ‘Your word is law,' he said. I found myself taking him along the very same way I had gone with Abel. Now I look back on it, it seems as if everything was said and done that afternoon might all have been arranged beforehand. I didn't have to think, or make up my mind, only take the next step. Just outside our gate, we met two of the Le Boutillier children, John and Peter. They are seventeen and fifteen, and was coming to see if I was all right. They gave me a funny look, when they saw I was with Neville, and just said ‘Hullo!' and walked on. ‘They are real good to me, those two kids,' I said. ‘They come and see how I am nearly every day.' ‘I can't stand kids hanging round me,' he said. ‘I don't want anybody hanging round me!' I wondered what had bitten him all of a sudden. ‘How is it you are so much like a hedgehog?' I said. ‘I am not a teenager!' he said. I said, ‘When you are the oldest on the island, as I am, you will only wish you could be a teenager!' ‘Who is the oldest on the island?' he said. ‘How about old Mrs Renouf from L'Islet, who is a hundred and two? Are you a hundred and three, then?' I said, ‘Well, I don't know if I am quite as old as that.' ‘Of course you are not as old as that,' he said, ‘nor anywhere near it! You are an old sprucer, that is what you are!' Anyhow, it got him into a good temper again.

He is not bad-natured: it is something else. He is good at heart really; that is, so long as you don't let him know it. He kept a kindly eye on me, as if I was a kid he had to look after. He was careful not to walk faster than I could go; and, when we got to Fort Pembroke, he found a comfortable place for me to sit in the sun with my back against a smooth stone. I was being looked after; and I liked it. He threw himself flat on his tummy on the grass in front of me, and grinned up at me. ‘Mustn't take any notice of what I say,' he said, ‘I am a misfit. I was hatched in the wrong nest.' For the minute, I thought he meant his father wasn't really his father, or his mother not really his mother. He read my thought. ‘Lord, no!' he said, and laughed. ‘I am not a bastard. It might have been better for me, if I had been. If you had known my mother and my father, you would wonder how it was I ever managed to get born at all!'

His father he had been against as long as he could remember. He was ready to like his mother, but she had always been afraid of him; and that made him angry. In looks he didn't take after either. His mother was fair to gingery and had been beautiful, he thought, when she was young; but she married late, and was pale and delicate after his birth. He didn't remember his grandparents; but knew his grandfather was killed in the First World War. His own father was dark with black hair like himself; but short and stocky. He was a man of good character, who always did the right thing. ‘He was the best man I have ever known for keeping his eye on the main chance,' said Neville, ‘and he could always think up a good and pious reason for doing so.' He was only a greenhouse hand before the Occupation; but he worked so hard and behaved himself so well, he had made a small fortune in German marks to change into English money after the Liberation. There was a ruined house at Paradise called Sea View, where slave-workers had been living, which was going for next to nothing. He bought it with the land attached, and had it done up; then got married to complete the picture. As a grower on his own account, he did well and was elected one of the new Deputies. He sat on a committee for the growers and Deputy H.J. Le M. Falla of Sea View was a name spoken only in a tone of respect: except by Neville. He was born and brought up at Sea View. ‘I came from a good home,' he said, ‘a good Christian home. Billy Graham's photo on the piano; and only hymns on Sundays.'